


Dakota Minnesota

by Callisto



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Case Fic, Gen, Humor, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-07
Updated: 2011-04-07
Packaged: 2017-10-17 17:44:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/179514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callisto/pseuds/Callisto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"Take me with you, Dean. I’m fine, Dean. You can’t do this alone, Dean. Eat a salad, Dean.” </i></p><p><i>Dean was the first to admit that mocking Sam without him there was a waste of time. But venting was helping him crunch his way back to the Impala through the cold night air of a Dakota forest in November, one careful foot in front of another, while he clutched his left side and tried not to bleed through his fingers too much.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Dakota Minnesota

**Author's Note:**

> A hug and thanks to Mara for her sharp eye, this has Sam taking care of his brother after a hunt. It's not attached to any particular episode or season.

No bones about it, it was one of the hastiest retreats Dean had ever beaten. And Sam... God, but Sam was going to be his royal fucking prissiness about this.

“Take me with you, Dean. I’m fine, Dean. You can’t do this alone, Dean. Eat a salad, Dean.”

Dean was the first to admit that mocking Sam without him there was a waste of time. But venting was helping him crunch his way back to the Impala through the cold night air of a Dakota forest in November, one careful foot in front of another, while he clutched his left side and tried not to bleed through his fingers too much.

Fucking water spirit freak. He’d had the flashlight in his mouth and a weapon in each hand for crying out loud, just as Sam had pestered him to. And the damn thing had still managed to drop down from a fucking _tree_. And get a claw through him. Those fuckers were not supposed to climb, so there was no way Sam was pinning this one on him for going after the thing by himself instead of—

“What the—? Goddamnit, Dean. I _knew_ something like this was going to happen if you went out alone. I _told_ you not to!”

Dean sighed and shifted his weight off his left side. So much for Plan A. Sam had clearly waited up, yanking the door open before Dean could get so much as an inch of his game face on. And here he was, dominating the doorframe and not letting the light through. But there was still enough for Dean to see him, to see his chest heaving and his eyes sparking with something other than the fever which had kept him in the motel the last two days.

Dean thought about drawing himself up and eyeballing Sam until he backed off, but a wave of lethargy sucked the last objection right out of him and he found himself swaying a little and just wanting to get in so he could sit the fuck down somewhere.

He squinted again. “You mind yelling me at me inside? Seeing as how it’s the middle of the night and I’m bleedin’?”

He went for pathetic, which he rarely did with Sam. But the relief when Sam stepped out and took hold of his arm just so, made him think about pulling that move more often. Not that he was let off easy, of course. Sam was muttering choice curses about stubborn morons and idiot brothers not having the sense God gave lettuce. But he was also matching his steps to Dean’s toddler-sized ones across the room, so Dean shut up and let himself be seated carefully on one of the beds.

“Lemme see.”

Dean had had his cold fingers wrapped around his ribs for so long, he wasn’t sure he could feel them enough to tell them to let go.

He felt Sam open his mouth before he saw it, and he braced himself for something bitchy about how slow and clumsy he was being. He flinched when Sam simply stretched out a hand to cover Dean’s bloody one. “Hey.”

He ground his teeth. “’S okay, I can do it, just give me a second. Fucking water fucking spirits. Fucking Minnesota. In fucking winter. Ow! Fuck!”

A few more fucks and bitten off curses telling Minnesotans to go do the impossible with themselves and their grandmothers, and Dean finally got his sticky fingers away from his side. Sam peeled off the blood-caked shirt underneath.

“Just... Christ, sit still a second okay, Dean? I’ll get the kit.”

Sam was back a minute later with the first-aid kit, a glass of water, and two Vicodins. “It’s not bleeding anymore, but it’s going to hurt like hell when I clean it out, and knowing you and your talent for pissing things off, you’ll need stitches.”

Dean looked at the outstretched hand with the pills, then up at his brother.“Terrific bedside manner you have there, Florence.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m all you’ve got, so bite me.”

 

“Fell out of a tree, Sammy,” announced Dean a while later. He licked his lips. He was feeling an uncontrollable need to break the silence. Sam was still concentrating on soaking off the dried blood, and didn’t look up from what he was doing.

“Yeah? What d’you land on? A pitchfork?”

Dean blinked at the top of Sam’s head. “Not me, moron. The thing, the whatchamacallit. Damn thing fell out of a tree on me.”

“I’m looking at a flap of skin I have to stitch back together because you couldn’t look up, and you’re seriously calling me a moron?”

Maybe it was the painkillers kicking in, maybe it was finally sitting down with Sammy crouched close by, fixing him up and being all prissy and Sam-like while he was doing it, but Dean couldn’t help himself. He reached out and ruffled Sam’s hair with his blood-free hand, and then smiled and let his hand stay there when Sam finally looked up. Even if Sam was about to inflict a bucketload of pain and discomfort on Dean and his skin, it was always nice to have his brother stop and smile like that.

“Just calling it how I see it, Francis. Wouldn’t want you walking around not knowing.”

“Fat chance of that with you ar...around, ohshit—” Sam’s face scrunched up and a monumental sneeze cut him off. Dean’s hand slid away.

“Gesundheit. Jesus.”

“Yeah.” Sam sniffed and blinked watery eyes.

“You okay?” In all the excitement and finger numbing cold, Dean had actually forgotten the reason he’d been out there alone and not looking up in the first place. He flattened his palm out on Sam’s forehead and ignored Sam’s eye roll.

“You’re clammy, Sammy.”

Man, that was _funny_.

“And you’re high, Dean.”

Sam was smiling, but he’d missed the point. And it was an important point. Dean had to clarify it, make sure Sammy got it. He licked his lips and tried again.“That’s not...you don’t...mine _rhymes_. It fuckin’ rhymes, dude. Yours is just...”

“I know, it’s a tragedy. Now hold still and pray I don’t sneeze while I’m doing this.”

“Don’t sneeze, Clammy Sammy.”

“Oh Jesus.”

 

Dean awoke with a start from a dream about a buck-toothed rabbit eating a giant lettuce and telling him to gargle more. He blinked and took a moment to let his surroundings come back. He felt like shit. His head hurt, he had a mouth full of cotton, and thirst was busy gluing his throat closed. First things first, he started to sit up. He slowed his movements considerably when his left side pulled and reminded him why he shouldn’t.

He shook the last of the dream off and looked down the bed. Pillows on all sides were keeping him still and warm, and sometime in the night another blanket had been added and tucked in around him. His boots were off, as were his jeans, and a clean black T-shirt had replaced the bloodied one from the night before. He couldn’t recall doing any of it himself. He squinted at the window to his right. It was clearly morning, but the drapes were closed and there wasn’t much light inside. Then he saw a familiar glow over in the far corner. The laptop.

He cleared his throat. “Sam?”

“Hey, it wakes. Morning. Water’s next to you, Dean.”

Dean drained the cup by his bed in long grateful gulps as Sam detoured to open the drapes, and then made his way over.

“Here,” Sam extended a takeout bag that, bless the world and everyone in it for giving him a brother, was still _warm_. “Two Egg McMuffins. I want you with food in your stomach before you have any more painkillers.”

“Coffee?”

“Why thank you, Sam. How kind of you to stay up most of the night and then go and get me breakfast first thing.”

“Yeah, yeah...coffee?”

“In a minute, you caffeine freak. Let me check this first.”

Sam sat on the bed next to Dean and checked his handiwork on the wound while Dean destroyed the first McMuffin in three large bites.

“Looks okay. You feel this?”

Dean shook his head and continued chewing. He could feel Sam’s fingers being gentle under the bandage but it didn’t hurt.

“Good, it’s not infected then. And I am an awesome stitcher, by the way.”

“So-er.”

“What? Dude, swallow what’s in your mouth first.”

Dean had no problem doing as he was told. He licked a few crumbs from his fingers and eased back onto his pillows with a satisfied sigh.

“Aw, thank you, Sam. That was wonderful. And I said ‘sew-er’. It’s a sewer, not a stitcher. You’re an awesome sewer. Well, you think you’re an awesome sewer.”

“Actually, I don’t think either one of those is a word, but I’ve had too much bad poetry out of you to care right now.”

Dean frowned, not liking the knowing smirk forming on Sam’s face. Something was coming back to him...something about clams and hams?

Sam’s smile was getting wider. “You need some help remembering last night, Dean? You were _rhyming_ shit. Making word rhymes. As in _poetry_ , dude. With my name. And you were so fucking proud of yourself!”

Yeah, that was it. Shit. “I was in pain,” said Dean, feeling his face get hot as he remembered. “And it’s your fault, you gave me the Vicodin!”

“Whatever. Totally worth it now. Though I nearly smothered you with a pillow at one point.”

Sam was already laughing, and then he was suddenly rocking back and forth on Dean’s bed with the sheer force of it. Dean’s own lips curved as he watched Sam’s head tilt back, his teeth flash as white as his T-shirt, and his mouth open in a smile so wide and loose his face disappeared. Sam always looked about twelve when he laughed like that, and it was a sound and habit that Dean had never been able to let him do alone. Not then, and not even when it was at his own expense, like now.

Then as now, Dean joined in as much as he could, and totally against his will.

“Ow, you fucker,” he said after about a minute, thumping Sam on the leg as his hand went to his side. “Enough.”

Sam hiccupped slowly to a halt, shaking his head and patting Dean’s leg as he stood up.

“I’ll go get your coffee and some more Vicodin. Just lay back on your pillows, your majesty. You need to rest up, because we’ve still got a hunt to finish.”

Dean grabbed his sleeve. “You’re—?”

“I’m fine, dude.” Sam grinned down at him. “I’m not Clammy Sammy anymore.”

Dean groaned and lay back. “You’re never going to let me forget this are you?”

“Not in this lifetime, Queen Dean.”

By the time Dean got his right hand around the empty cup to throw it at his brother, Sam was already laughing his ass off safe and sound behind a closed bathroom door.

******


End file.
